i've wanted to try stand up paddle boarding for a long time now, and we finally took a class. we met in santa monica at 8am saturday for a class with malibu longboards. they provide wetsuits, but luckily james and i both had our own, a board and a paddle. there was about five minutes of on-land instruction - where to stand on the board, how to hold the paddle, how to stand up, etc. and then we were off! getting past the surf was the hardest part. once past that, we got on the board, and paddled out on our knees for a bit, then we were free to stand up and paddle around as we pleased.
it was really tiring. i've always heard its a core workout, but even more than my core, it exhausted my thighs and butt - the water was a little choppy so for almost two hours you're just constantly rebalancing yourself. i was pretty good on the way out against the wind, but had adjusted to lean forward; on the way back, i didn't "reverse" my balance the way i really should have so felt off balance the whole time and ended up falling off a couple times. luckily, i've always enjoyed swimming in the ocean, so it really didn't bother me. the nice thing also, is that you can always just go down and paddle on your knees, or even sit down completely. a couple other people in the group never even stood up.
we went out toward this green buoy, that had quite a few noisy sea lions on it. we got so close, we could smell them (stinky!). i already thought that was pretty cool, but after we paddled away from the buoy, we were suddenly surrounded by dolphins! a couple jumped out of the water less than five feet from me! what a crazy experience. really wish we'd had a waterproof camera we could have brought out or something, but we had so much fun we'll definitely be doing it again.
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